A variety of digital and analogue cameras exist for capturing images in a number of formats including still picture images, sequences of still picture images and video image sequences.
The quality of an image is easily affected by movement of the camera while the image is being collected, i.e., captured. Modern cameras, such as video cameras, now feature motion stabilization so as to produce a steady video image in spite of any user handshake or other vibrational disturbances. This improves the quality of the captured image.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,725 describes a method of and apparatus for processing an image captured by a video camera so as to identify undesired video image motion caused by camera motion (rotation or translation), and to subsequently generate a corrected signal in which the undesired image motion is reduced.
It is known that different stabilization techniques are needed to compensate for different types of motion. Modern cameras incorporate motion detection sensors to determine the type of motion a camera experiences (e.g. sudden acceleration or deceleration, or the camera slowly panning across a view). The cameras apply the appropriate motion compensation technique automatically based on a derived measured camera motion, and whether the motion is determined to be deliberate or not.
Also known in the art are cameras that act as situation-based selective video recording systems. For instance, the article “Unsupervised clustering of ambulatory audio and video” by Brian Clarkson and Alex Pentland, Technical Report 471, MIT Media Lab, Perceptual Computing Group, describes a camera, including a wearable computer system, arranged to record the day to day activities of a user. The article describes the development of a system for extracting events and scenes from the audio/visional input of the camera, so that the camera images can easily be indexed.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention aim to obviate or overcome a problem associated with the prior art, whether referred to herein or otherwise.